Many users access specific websites on the Internet using a computer or mobile device connected to the Internet to request or buy products and/or services. Each of these websites is related to a corresponding server. A website can refer to a specific application i.e. booking a trip or voyage. The application generally comprises a sequence of successive parts such as pages. This means that each part appears after the user has completed the preceding part. These types of website use a predetermined session timeout period for the entire application only. This means that each part does not have a predetermined session timeout period, but each part uses the predetermined session timeout period defined at the application level. The session timeout period of the application is generally around 10 minutes. Thus, a user who connects to the website has 10 minutes to read the content of one part, fill in the requested data and submit the requested data to the application. During this time, the data the user has entered is stored temporarily on the server.
In the situation where the user has not finished a required step of the application within the session timeout period, the user is disconnected from the application and the stored data is lost. As a result, the user has to restart the application from the beginning and to re-enter all the data again. In order to avoid some of the disadvantages of this, some websites provide a pop-up window which automatically appears a few seconds before the session times out. The user is required to indicate that the current session of the application is kept opened by clicking on a specific button in the window. If the user always chooses to continue with the current session, the pop-up window will continue to appear again at a regular interval. As a result, the user has to continually confirm that the current session is kept open. The session timeout period does not adapt in any way to the time needed by individual users. The only result of the use of the pop-up window is that the duration of the session timeout period is extended each time the user requests the current session to continue.
An object of the present invention is to alleviate some of the problems associated with the prior art systems.
A further object of the present invention is to provide a method and system to dynamically adapt a session timeout of a stateful client server application.